In a book, happines from start to finish is boring. No one wants to read it. Let’s be honest, have you ever known anyone who’s life is always perfect? Or at least they say so? Don’t you really, really hate that because you know it can’t possibly be true?

No one has a perfect life. No one has a perfect relationship. And no one has a perfect job. There are good parts and bad parts, highs and lows, and each person manages to get their own mechanisms for coping. When you talk to a friend, you will often share the goods and bads and those honest interchanges make you like them even more.

The stranger that just tells you how perfect their life is may annoy you, but often after you dig a little deeper (if they let you), you’ll find there’s a few pimples under all that makeup or a scar or two they’ve kept under wraps.

Think of fiction as your new best friend when you write it….this book you’re reading is not quite comfortable dumping every part of the drama on you all at once, so it unfolds in parts as you read. When you get to the end, and you’ve found a book you really love, you’ve peeled off all the layers and exposed the problems –and the characters overcome them.

But sometimes it just doesn’t work. And that’s when it gets dull and lifeless. So, how do you fix it?

Be the Shock Doctor

Ask yourself these questions:

Is this interesting? If yes, then keep writing. If no, delete it and replace. Does it add to the characters or story development? If yes, keep writing. If not, delete. If the section is only partially interesting, what can you do to shock the reader? What can you throw at the characters that is so unexpected and amazing that the reader has to keep going to find out what happens next?

 

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